And KurtiusInterupptis: For why the "engineers!" comment? You wouldn't have any applicances to fix if there weren't any engineers to design them wrong. KurtiusInterupptus wrote: Whoa there parder... didn't mean to offend yo delicate professional sensibility's - any professional technician who has had the pleasure of servicing in the home of a PE understood and appreciated the humor conveyed in that post. In other words - It's a joke ,so you can retract the claws- please continue to churn out new appliances so I may continue be gainfully employed
Sorry. No claws out. That was just the sorry excuse for humor that I make do with around here. Tell you what: If I ever do go into applicance design, I promise I will make it up to you by designing an especially bad appliance just for you.

And regarding my current job, I assure you I had nothing whatsoever to do with the part that broke and delayed your last flight to Vegas. Really, that was some other guy, not me. Stop looking at me like that.

So the new thermostat didn't help, which I think is the first part I've replaced that didn't need fixing. New idea.

5. Maybe the impeller got slightly damaged during the overheat, so there's OK airflow, but not good airflow.

So I took apart the hot air exit duct + lint filter holder thingy. Double handfull of crap in the bottom, which I dutifully removed. The impeller looks great.

But the foam seal between the drum and the exit duct looks awful. Shrivelled and distorted and unhappy. I think, "Aha! The Samurai will gasp in wonder! I have a new problem that will amaze everyone." New idea:

6. The foam was damaged and shrivelled up when the previous failures caused an overheat. Air is being drawn into the exit duct at through the leaky foam seal, cooling off the dryer air and thereby biasing the thermostat by ~25 deg F.

So I tested the air temperature in the exit duct by the thermostat. On the "Low" setting it was ~135 deg F. (And I verified that the thermal lag on the oven thermometer is huge - it took almost 5 minutes to return to room temperature.) So the thermostat is working correctly! Sounds like exactly what you would get with a serious air leak. But how to seal it?

I dug around in my spare parts bin and found some high temperature HVAC duct foil tape. Good to 200 deg F, and 100% airtight.

I went back into Dante's laundry room (so skinny there's only 6" between the dryer door and the opposite wall) and sealed up 90% of the circumference. Unfortunately, my hands are too big to tape up the very top, but I tried. Only drawback: it will be a major female dog to get that duct off the drum if I ever have to take it apart again.

Where are we taking these temps from? The temps I quoted should be vent discharge temps from the rear of the unit. Most manufacturers recommend testing temps here in the service manuals. You can poke a hole in the vent to check it hooked up, and then remove the vent to see the differences. Is this where you checked them from to give the earlier temp readings?

One thing to consider would be to change the specs of the design of the dryer and install a lower temperature cycling thermostat in place of the one it is designed for if this dryer from hell does not behave??? Like one rated for 140 degrees or so....just a thought here....

Trying to help wrote: Where are we taking these temps from? The temps I quoted should be vent discharge temps from the rear of the unit. Most manufacturers recommend testing temps here in the service manuals. You can poke a hole in the vent to check it hooked up, and then remove the vent to see the differences. Is this where you checked them from to give the earlier temp readings?

I'm getting 155-175 inside the dryer tub. I have a kickass magnet that will stick two refrigerators together, and I used it to stick the oven thermometer onto the inside of the dryer door.

Later, I unstuck the exhaust hose and stuck the magnet and thermometer into the exhuast outlet, where the hose to the wall is attached. I turned the thermometer sideways to it wouldn't impede the airflow too much. I got between 135-160 deending on setting.

"I'm getting 155-175 inside the dryer tub" .....Well ...no wonder you think it is overheating....have to read the air temp at the dryer exhaust vent.......when there is a load of wet items in the drum........this sure explains everything.

Pegi wrote: One thing to consider would be to change the specs of the design of the dryer and install a lower temperature cycling thermostat in place of the one it is designed for if this dryer from hell does not behave??? Like one rated for 140 degrees or so....just a thought here....Pegi, I think your suggestion would be the only thing that will satisfy my wife. (mind you, I'd prefer to satisfy her myself, but if your help is required, at least she's satisfied...)

The adjustable unit that AccApp suggests won't help because she will still (reasonably) want the temp selector to work, which requires a bias heater.

But I have a hard time believing this is the way Whirlpool intended the dryer to work. All my pants are highwater, all my shirts are short-sleeved, and my undies bunch up.

We will leave satisfying your wife up to you. But if your temps are similar to what I posted prior at the dryer vent discharge If you are averaging 155-160 ish on regular, and a lower temp then that on Medium and a lower temp then that on low, your are probably within specs. Delicate is not just a breath of warm air. It usually will have an average of 135-145 depending on make and model. , your going to be about right. Again, the only time you get temps averaging 125 or so is when the unit is equipped with an ultra care setting which operates off of a separate 120-125 degree t-stat or a thermistor and board style unit. With wet clothes in the unit, we should get approximately 155-160 average on Regular, medium should be lower then that temp, and then low or delicate lower still. Good luck on what you decide to do!

Yeah, I measured the "low" temp inside the drum of the neighbor's dryer and got the same temp, more or less.

I think the only remaining explanations for the shrunken clothes are:

(1) The clothes shrank before I fixed the heater, and my wife is just confused. Maybe I'll let one of you guys tell her that, OK?
(The problem with that theory is that the baby wasn't even born then, and she thinks it shrinks his clothes.)
(2) Operator error.
As before, maybe one of you guys will volunteer to tell her that.
(3) Intermittant temp overheats for some as yet unknown reason.
(One argument in favor of this is that I have a shirt with actual scorchmarks on it, and I think I bought it after I bent the heater wires straight but before I installed the new heater.)

Any ideas what might cause an intermittant overheat? Or an overheat that only occurs in "Automatic Dry-Miser" mode?

The only way I can think to check for intermittants is to borrow a thermocouple datalogger test rig from work and run the dryer while taking measurements continuously. Or maybe I will just tell the wife it is fixed and report back if she continues to complain.

Let me correct that: I will report back if she continues to complain about the dryer. The way I originally wrote that, I'd be posting every five mnutes...

Though I can't help you with your current problem, I must say thank you for posting it. Your posts, and everyone's help convinced me to:

A) Become an official entry-level Samurai
B) Not buy a replacement thermostat.
C) Explain to my wife that we didn't need to buy a new dryer.
D) Remove the MASSIVE amount of lint from our rugs (as eluded to the sock stuffing young Samurai example).

BTW, I did eventually fix this problem for good:
I bought a nice new set of Whirlpool Duets.

I kind of wish I'd bought the spiffy red LG units they had at Lowe's, but I got a screaming deal on the White Duets.

Our long skinny laundry room was 1" wider than the combined width of the Duets, so I ripped open the wall and moved all the pipes and wires.

The laundry room used to look like a hallway, where some confused person had installed a washer-dryer set facing the left wall. Now the laundry room now looks like a long skinny hallway that some confused person installed appliances at the end of.

And the Small Samurai? He is now much bigger, and is sitting on my shoulders as I type, explaining that, "What all the da words, Daddy? I gonna build a tower crane next week, daddy. It be really big one! Yeah! Now I gotta check on mommy."